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Victory!

* Anatole Kaletsky: Associate Editor of The Times* Professor Norman Stone: Professor of International Relations and Director of the Russian Centre at Bilkent University, Ankara.* Alexei Pushkov: Anchor of the most popular Russian TV programme “Post Scriptum” which has considerable influence on Russian public perception of international events.

Speakers against the motion:

* Edward Lucas: Central and Eastern Europe correspondent for the The Economist and author of The New Cold War: How the Kremlin Menaces Both Russia and the West (2008).

"The belief that security can be obtained by throwing a small state to the wolves is a fatal delusion," said Winston Churchill just before Munich – we should have learnt the lesson 70 years ago.Der Glaube, dass man Sicherheit erreicht, indem man einen kleinen Staat den Wölfen vorwirft, ist eine fatale Illusion.

PICK up a Slovak newspaper, and you will find it a quick, if depressing, read. The main dailies have in recent weeks been appearing with blank, black-framed front pages, in protest at a new media law that will give anyone mentioned in an article sweeping rights to an equally prominent rebuttal. International media watchdogs have sharply attacked the law. They are worried by declining media freedom across eastern Europe.

Slovakia's new law comes into force on June 1st. If somebody referred to in a newspaper story complains, the onus will be on the editor to print their response unless he can persuade a court to rule otherwise. A rebuttal may not be accompanied by additional editorial comment. A refusal to print one can lead to big fines. Right-of-reply rules are common in several European countries, but Slovakia's law is the most punitive and, potentially, arbitrary.

The government, a populist-nationalist coalition, insists that the law will make the media more responsible. “It does not jeopardise freedom of the press. It merely upgrades the interest of the public above the interest of the publishers,” says Marek Madaric, the culture minister. The Slovak media are not above reproach. A forthcoming report by the Open Society Institute, a group financed by George Soros, talks of “plagiarism, refusal to make corrections and hidden conflicts of interest.”

Yet there is reason to worry about how Slovakia's prime minister, Robert Fico, may use the law. He has a prickly relationship with the media, which have harried his government for inertia and alleged corruption. He declines to give interviews and sometimes even to take questions from critical journalists, and he has called some daily newspapers “prostitutes”. Some journalists recall the dark days of the 1990s, when the authoritarian government of Vladimir Meciar (who is now Mr Fico's junior coalition partner) jeopardised the country's accession to the European Union and NATO. (To be fair, Mr Fico's predecessor, Mikulas Dzurinda, who was lionised abroad for his reforms, clashed with the press, and was once accused of bugging media opponents.)

Slovakia's new law is the most conspicuous in the region. But arbitrary legal constraints on press freedom are worrisome elsewhere, too. In Bulgaria defamation of public figures (a broad category that can include prominent businessmen) is a crime that can be punished with a fine. Journalists can also be sued for infringing somebody's “honour and dignity”. As many as 60 cases went to court in 2006, and a further 100 in 2007.

In Romania the constitutional court last year restored a tough defamation law that criminalises “insult”, though the effect on press freedom pales beside the ownership of most of the mainstream media by three politically active tycoons, plus political interference in public broadcasting. America's ambassador to Bucharest, Nicholas Taubman, has suggested that “legislators should strengthen their own accountability...rather than try to hamper the efforts of a free media to exercise its legitimate role in Romania, either through criminalising journalistic efforts or otherwise intimidating independent media.”

All this is bad news in a region that used to take pride in its reborn freedom. And bad laws are only part of the picture. In the annual report of Freedom House, a New York-based lobby group, to be published on April 29th, the ex-communist countries show the biggest relative decline in media freedom in the world, chiefly because of a perceived politicisation of public broadcasting. The drop is larger than in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Thus Latvia's score slips from 19 to 22, after the government appeared to lean on public television to cover Russia more politely. Slovakia's falls from 20 to 22, Slovenia's from 21 to 23, and Poland's from 22 to 24. Mr Soros's media-watchers echo Freedom House's judgment. “Politicians think these public broadcasters should be ‘theirs’,” says Marius Dragomir, who is publishing a clutch of detailed reports on public-service broadcasting in the region. With EU accession safely negotiated, politicians now feel able to exploit the fruits of power more freely. Politicised public broadcasting is a useful tool to manipulate the voters, especially when commercial television is run by friendly tycoons.

Such trends are troubling. But everything is relative. Recently a Russian newspaper, Moskovsky Korrespondent, published a widespread rumour about the supposed relationship of President Vladimir Putin with a comely gymnast, Alina Kabaeva. After Mr Putin lambasted the tabloid, which is a sister publication to Novaya Gazeta, an opposition paper, it was promptly shut down by its publisher. Such an event would be unimaginable in the new EU members from central and eastern Europe. For now, at least.

(This was written with the help of my excellent freelance colleagues in Bratislava (Katerina Mikulova), Bulgaria (Irina Novikova) and Bucharest (Valentina Pop)

HOW many people does it take to cause a real riot? Three: two to fight, and one to film it. It is easy to get some yobbos to attack a policeman; if he hits back, the footage can be made to look disproportionately brutal. That is what worries Estonians as the anniversary of last year’s “bronze soldier” riots in Tallinn looms.

Few people can look back on those events and reckon they got everything right. Estonian politicians used unfortunate rhetoric, and may have been overhasty in moving the capital’s best-known Soviet war-memorial in what seemed to at least some local Russians as an act of vindictiveness. That provoked (perhaps stoked by the Kremlin) the worst unrest in Estonia since independence.

The bronze soldier replaced a wooden memorial blown up in 1946 by Aili Jurgenson, then 14, and Ageeda Paavel, who was 15. Both were punished with long terms in the Gulag. The two girls were upset by the way in which Soviet forces had been systematically obliterating memorials to Estonia’s fallen soldiers from the war of independence.

That highlights the gulf in perception about what the “victory” was about. The Soviet soldiers may have sincerely thought that they had “liberated” the Baltic states (just as many of those who invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968 believed they were in West Germany). But for the locals, they were just one occupying force replacing another.

The monument now stands in a dignified and prominent position in a multinational military cemetery, along with British and German war dead. But that will not appease the Kremlin, which seems to be relaunching a propaganda offensive against Estonia and Latvia. At the NATO summit in Bucharest, President Vladimir Putin blamed the alliance for not forcing the two countries to give equal rights to “Russians” (by which he meant Soviet migrants stranded by the empire’s collapse).

That issue can’t be solved neatly. Fairest to the remaining non-citizens—about 300,000 in Latvia and over 100,000 in Estonia—would be automatic naturalisation. That would be perhaps more palatable now for the host countries than it was in the early 1990s, when reborn statehood seemed terrifyingly fragile. But it would be unfair to the people who have suffered most from the ruinous occupation that started in 1940: the citizens of the prewar republics and their descendants, who were close to being a minority in their own countries by 1991.

Grim post-Soviet mortality rates will shrink the problem eventually. But for now it is hard to see a good outcome. One approach would be to put more money and effort into encouraging many more non-citizens to take local citizenship (which chiefly involves passing a language exam). Tens of thousands have already done this.

Second is continuing with the existing approach; this will need increased efforts to maintain foreign support as Russian pressure increases.

A third option would be to make a radical change, liberalising the citizenship law. The danger with that is that the Kremlin would swallow the concession, lick its lips, and demand the next course: the introduction of Russian as an official language, perhaps.

The biggest shortage in the Baltic states now is political vision and imagination, both in solving domestic problems (including integration of non-citizens), and in seizing the initiative abroad. It would be nice to think that instead of sitting around worrying what the Kremlin and its local allies were planning for the demonstrations' anniversary, a team of bright-eyed Estonian information warriors were planning a series of clever, witty and headline-grabbing stunts that would leave their opposite numbers in Moscow flummoxed.

Don’t hold your breath.

Friday, April 18, 2008

BulgariaDirty politicsApr 17th 2008From The Economist print editionOne resignation is not enough to clean up Bulgaria

RUMEN PETKOV admits that as the then Bulgarian interior minister he met the country's top gangsters in 2006. He claims it was in a good cause: to ask them to stop shooting each other in the crucial weeks ahead of the country's accession to the European Union.

Bulgaria's woes with crime and corruption needed more than a temporary ceasefire. Gangland shootings, never resolved, have resumed: last week gunmen killed Bulgaria's best-known author of books on the mafia, Georgy Stoyev, and the manager of an energy firm with a controversial history.

Under pressure from the European Union, Mr Petkov resigned this week after a leaked intelligence report said a drug gang had received top-secret internal documents from officials in his ministry, while illegal booze producers gave money to a senior crime-fighter in return for information and the destruction of incriminating evidence. EU officials have long worried that anything they shared with Bulgarian counterparts would be leaked to gangsters. Eurocrats say they objected to Mr Petkov's bullying attitude; an EU source says he enjoyed “rubbing our nose into the fact that Bulgaria is now a member state”. That is not a unanimous view. The European Commission's vice-president, Franco Frattini, went skiing with Mr Petkov last year and has praised him. But the EU has already suspended some programmes because of corruption. In July, it will assess Bulgaria's overall progress and may suspend the validity of its court decisions elsewhere in the EU.

It was a parliamentary investigation that made Mr Petkov's position impossible. But the real story is Bulgaria's political weakness. The ruling ex-communists are split between a supposedly modernising faction lead by the prime minister, Sergey Stanishev, and the old guard around Mr Petkov. A coalition party that represents the Turkish ethnic minority controls the agriculture and environment ministries, the main conduits for EU money. It has been heavily criticised for land deals, arbitrary treatment of mining licences and vote-buying.

Mr Stanishev was recently forced to bring back into government a deputy environment minister from this party, fired last year for alleged corruption (and then cleared). While out of office he caused surprise by acquiring two newspapers (from his savings, he said). The economy minister, Rumen Ovcharov, another old guard ex-communist, resigned last year under a cloud, but protested his innocence. Criticism from Brussels and elsewhere about Bulgaria's murk has continued. One more resignation is unlikely to make a difference.

TONY JUDT is a polymath. He was born in Britain into a family of Jewish refugees and now lives in America, where he teaches at New York University. He has an enviable grasp of European cultural history and a sharp and sometimes savage turn of phrase, both of which are well displayed in this collection of long essays and book reviews.

Mr Judt is at his best attacking those he believes mischaracterise or misunderstand intellectual giants like Arthur Koestler and Primo Levi. Myriam Anissimov's book on Levi, he says, is “uninspired and mechanical”; her narrative “a choppy mix of long excerpts” mixed up with “clunky and inadequate summaries of ‘context’.” Mr Judt sees Ms Anissimov's misunderstanding of Levi's significance as akin to describing Ulysses (Levi's literary hero) as being nothing more than “an old soldier on the way back from the wars who encounters a few problems en route. Not false, but hopelessly inadequate.”

Yet these demolition jobs just clear the stage for the main performance, which is Mr Judt's own shrewd and revealing thoughts on the subject in question. At the end, long after you have forgotten Koestler's “Darkness at Noon” and only dimly remember that Levi made chemistry interesting, you feel you have been eavesdropping on a sparkling conversation.

Mr Judt skewers two revered figures: Louis Althusser (a Marxist theorist and narcissist, madman and murderer) and Eric Hobsbawm, the grand old man of English left-wing history. He carefully dissects Mr Hobsbawm's evasions and euphemisms on the subject of the millions of murders committed in the name of the communist cause he still espouses: “Eric Hobsbawm is the most naturally gifted historian of our time; but rested and untroubled, he has somehow slept through the terror and shame of the age.” It is a performance worthy of George Orwell.

Mr Judt's sorties on religion, politics and economics are less judicious and drip with contempt for modern politicians. In the introduction he laments that the period between the collapse of communism and the Iraq war were locust years, a “decade and a half of wasted opportunity and political incompetence on both sides of the Atlantic.” Perhaps. But it is hard to find any age in recorded history in which politicians covered themselves in glory.

The authoritative tone which is so convincing when he is talking about the continental intellectuals of the last century works less well when it is peddling the conventional wisdom of the left. Mr Judt's attempt to explain Britain by discussing the decline of its trains, for example, verges on the ludicrous: Britain's privatised railways may have their problems but in 2007 they recorded the highest number of passenger-miles since 1946.

More controversial are his attacks on Israel and what he regards as the all-powerful Israel lobby in America, which, he says, squelches debate and is pulling both countries towards disaster. Mr Judt's opinions are well-known and widely debated, which undermines his argument that they are rarely heard. Many will find both judgments and facts awry. Does Israel really have “no” friends apart from America? He echoes, with apparent approval, the notion that the Jewish state “is widely regarded as a—/the/—leading threat to world peace”. The italics are his.

Mr Judt also often adds a pompous-sounding endnote to his essays, preening himself over the controversy while dismissing other voices. Energetic readers may enjoy looking up the references, but it would serve the cause of truth better if he had printed his assailants' remarks alongside his own. Mr Judt, it would seem, enjoys dishing out criticism, but is less willing to take it on the chin himself.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

DON’T give Georgia a firm promise of NATO membership, the argument went at the alliance’s recent summit in Bucharest, because it will provoke the Kremlin. If that was a calculated risk, it now appears mistaken. Russia is stepping up its political representation in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two breakaway enclaves in Georgia that it has supported for the past 15 years, as well as its recognition of their legal system.

Just before the NATO summit, Georgia came out with a peace plan which—had it been offered a few years ago—would have counted as a magnanimous attempt to restart the blocked negotiations. It offered Abkhazia wide-ranging autonomy in return for talks on other contested issues. But the timing made it look like a gimmick, and it fell flat.

Now the Kremlin has taken the initiative, with a neat double-edged argument. The first is aimed at Georgia: by moving towards NATO, you are provoking us, so take the consequences. The second is aimed at NATO: if you really want to take Georgia under your wing, you will have to worry about direct military conflicts with us. So beware.

The argument is proving effective, though Russia’s support for Abkhazia and South Ossetia is really nothing new. Their economies are already propped up by Russian subsidies and their borders defended by Russian soldiers (labelled as peace-keepers). Most of the population has Russian passports. That gives the Kremlin a perfect excuse to increase its formal presence and involvement: after all, it is merely looking after its own citizens.

Diplomatic recognition is a slippery concept. Thanks to pressure from “Red China” (as it used to be called) most countries do not formally recognise the Republic of China (as Taiwan calls itself). But trade, tourism and political ties continue quite smoothly. Contrast that with countries such as Somalia that have diplomatic recognition—but not much else.

Abkhazia could end up as Russia’s Taiwan. That gives the Kremlin plenty of room to create more practical links (including military ones), without creating big diplomatic problems with the outside world, or setting dangerous precedents in its own restive regions.

Russia may hope to provoke the Georgian authorities into adventurism abroad or a crackdown at home. The parliamentary elections due on May 21st already look troublingly flawed—though blame for that rests at least partly with the hotheaded and shambolic opposition, as well as with the authorities’ heavy-handed approach to media freedom and judicial independence. The Council of Europe this week noted with dismay, for example, the failure to introduce promised electoral reform measures, or to allow the opposition unrestricted access to CCTV footage of polling stations.

It is hard to overstate Georgia’s importance for the West. This week’s news that the European Union had reached an initial gas deal with Turkmenistan, for example, highlights yet again Georgia’s role as an energy corridor linking Europe with Central Asia.

In that calculus, morals usually go out of the window. Iran is a pariah, but Turkmenistan (a far worse dictatorship) is a potential strategic partner. Flaws that would prompt hysterics if they happened in Russia are overlooked in Kazakhstan or Azerbaijan.

In one sense, that gives Georgia carte blanche to behave badly. Even friends of Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia’s president, admit he can be impetuous, secretive, and hostile towards independent advice, but they seem unlikely to kick up a fuss.

That would be a sad outcome—not least for Georgia. The best way to defeat the Kremlin’s real and proxy attacks is not to create a Georgian version of Putinism, but to escape from it. In other words, to be a political success story and not just an economic one.

BELIEVE the spin, and America and its European allies are doing a great job in bolstering the future security of a Europe whole and free. The NATO summit in Bucharest gave an (undated) promise of future membership to Ukraine and Georgia and endorsed America's plans for a limited missile-defence system in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Reality is rather different. George Bush's efforts to burnish his presidential legacy led to a venomous row. Some NATO members in old Europe thought they were being railroaded by America into hasty expansion (see article). Some in eastern Europe worried that a Russia-friendly camp centred on Germany was taking shape inside the alliance. Meanwhile, the chirpy tone of a later meeting in Sochi between Mr Bush and Vladimir Putin belied a lack of substance.

But the real worry for Europe is a different one. It gets a quarter of its gas from Russia and the proportion is set to rise sharply. The Kremlin uses its monopoly of east-west gas pipelines, and offers of lucrative bilateral gas deals, to interfere in Europe's energy business. It relies on friends like Germany to block efforts to liberalise European markets and diversify supply.

Russia is also pushing ahead with South Stream, a $15 billion pipeline to bring gas across the Black Sea to central Europe via the Balkans. Three European Union members, Bulgaria, Hungary and Italy, have signed up, and Austria is interested. This weakens the chances of an EU-backed alternative, Nabucco, already stymied by lack of gas, partly because of Russia's Caspian arm-twisting and also because politics precludes using supplies from Iran.

The energy-security outlook is bleak, but the EU could help itself in three ways. First, by pushing harder for new pipelines that weaken Russia's grip on gas from the east. Efforts to revive Nabucco should continue. But political support should also be garnered for White Stream, an ingenious smaller-bore pipeline that aims to bring Caspian gas across the Black Sea to Europe, bypassing awkward Turkey. Serious talks on that would concentrate minds on Russia's troubling monopoly. The West also already has access to twin oil and gas pipelines from the Caspian to Turkey.

Second, the EU needs to drive a harder bargain with Russia on the gas it does buy. Its population is more than three times Russia's; it is 13 times richer by GDP. And it is after all in Russia's interest too to make sure that Central Asia's gas is sold to Europe (ie, mostly via Russia) not directly to China. Europe is also the most plausible market for the big new gas field Russia plans to develop in the Arctic. Its ill-run, debt-soaked gas industry needs Western expertise and cash to modernise.

But Europe also needs to insist on more liberalisation and transparency in the gas industry. A deep and liquid market would make it harder for the Kremlin to manipulate supply. Gazprom—the trading name of the gas division of Kremlin, Inc—should be able to invest in Europe only if it obeys the rules. The EU should treat Gazprom with the same toughness that it has shown towards Microsoft, obliging it to publish details of its contracts and open the books of shadowy intermediary companies such as RosUkrEnergo. These often seem to exist solely to siphon off export revenues, for the benefit of hidden owners. And Gazprom needs to separate its transmission, distribution and storage assets to allow full third-party access—as the EU should have forced its own companies to do.

The intricate economics of the gas business may seem less exciting than the Star Wars technology of missile defence. But for Europe's unity and security, they matter more.

THE job of NATO used to be straightforward: keep the Americans in, the Germans down and the Russians out. These days things are less certain. A week after the alliance's acrimonious summit in Bucharest, and an inconclusive follow-up meeting between presidents George Bush and Vladimir Putin to discuss anti-missile defences, NATO's future role in Europe's security seems particularly unclear.

The most controversial question for the coming months, even years, will be how far the alliance should expand; in particular whether it should take in Ukraine and Georgia. At NATO's summit in Bucharest, Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel, led the resistance to an American-led move to grant the two countries the next step to membership—known as the Membership Action Plan (MAP). NATO postponed the issue to a meeting of foreign ministers in December, or perhaps to its 60th anniversary summit in April next year. Or perhaps, given that Mr Bush's successor will still be getting his team in place, a decision may be delayed for much longer.

On one reading of events, this expansion of NATO is a mere formality. Ukraine and Georgia claim to be delighted with the summit communiqué, which said firmly: “These countries will become members of NATO”. Without a date for MAP, however, this promise may mean less than it seems.

The fallout in Ukraine has been limited so far. Only a minority of the public supports NATO membership. That is one reason why the alliance is chary of issuing a firm invitation. The government in Kiev says it will concentrate on making the case for NATO and pushing ahead with the less controversial bid to seek an association agreement with the European Union, which it hopes to secure in September. Ukraine's leaders also still have plenty to do to convince other NATO countries that they both meet the criteria and really want to join the alliance—something that is bound to bring a big political cost in relations with the Kremlin.

Yuri Luzhkov, the mayor of Moscow, said that Russia should punish Ukraine for even trying to join NATO. According to a Russian newspaper report, Mr Putin lost his temper with Mr Bush at a meeting on the final day of the Bucharest summit, telling him: “Do you understand, George, that Ukraine is not even a state.” Claiming that most of Ukraine's territory was “given away” by Russia, Mr Putin supposedly also said that if the country joined NATO it would “cease to exist”. A Kremlin spokesman at the meeting says he did not hear the exchange. Still, intemperate language from Russia may stiffen Ukrainian resolve to move closer to the West.

In Georgia, the authorities complain that Russia is accelerating the “creeping annexation” of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, breakaway regions that maintain an unrecognised independence, backed by the Kremlin. On the day of the summit decision, Mr Putin sent a letter to the secessionist leaders promising that Russia would “further widen and deepen its all-embracing practical co-operation”.

Georgia fears that the price of NATO membership may be the permanent loss of Abkhazia, in particular, from which the 250,000-strong majority ethnic Georgian population fled in 1993. One worry is how Mikheil Saakashvili, the impetuous Georgian president, will handle the Abkhaz issue. Another is the upcoming Georgian parliamentary elections in May, in which Mr Saakashvili's clannish supporters are battling a hot-headed opposition. A fairly-counted poll, and a calm approach to Abkhazia, may help to allay fears in NATO countries, particularly Germany, about Georgia's suitability for membership.

Indecision in NATO leaves plenty of room for the European Union. But the EU shows little sign so far of wanting to take the lead in the continent's security policy—for example in reaching out to Ukraine. It is still struggling to digest its most recent expansion to Romania and Bulgaria—countries that seem to be going backwards rather than forwards on issues such as the rule of law and organised crime. This week the European Commission reiterated that Bulgaria needs to tackle gangsterism and corruption. Despite 150 assassinations since 2001, nobody has been convicted, nor has any senior Bulgarian official successfully been prosecuted for corruption.

The other big issue is America's planned missile defence bases: ten interceptor rockets in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic. In its dying months, the Bush administration is keen to settle the issue with Russia, but has so far been unable to do so. It has offered several “transparency” measures—such as a promise not to switch on the system until a threat (from Iran) emerges, and access for Russian liaison officers—to reassure Mr Putin that the missile shield is not an attempt to neutralise Russia's nuclear arsenal.

Russia insists that it wants around-the-clock monitors based at both sites—a demand that causes resentment in countries that 19 years ago were unwilling members of the Soviet-led Warsaw pact. The Czech Republic has reached a deal on hosting the American radar, but Poland is holding out for better terms—especially American help to modernise its armed forces.

America's policy in eastern Europe is running out of steam. Earlier successes, such as expanding NATO to the Baltic states, are now overshadowed by disunity. Some newer NATO members even view Germany as something of a “fifth column” for Russia. Given the uncertainty over what a new American presidency will bring, the outlook for many in Europe's ex-communist states is worrying.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

A big international conference, such as last week’s NATO summit in Bucharest, can seem bewildering. So here are a few tips on how to crack it.

First, the more important the person the less useful the meeting. Getting up before breakfast to watch George Bush make a speech is unlikely to be a good use of time. You will be locked into the auditorium well in advance (and probably banned from using your mobile phone or BlackBerry). Then you will have to wait for ages before you are allowed to leave. The speech will be on the White House website anyway.

If questions are being taken, catch the chairman’s eye well before the end of the platform speeches—as close to the beginning of the session as you can is good. And keep his attention. Then have a really well-phrased question prepared.

But informal meetings are usually the most useful. You are best off catching up with old friends (especially if you have planned a few key rendezvous in advance). Hanging about in hotel bars late at night is where you get the real story. Advisers to important people tend to be more interesting than the bigshots themselves (particularly if you can get them to show off a bit about what they know).

Find the hotels where the key delegations are staying and head there to make new contacts. The best way is to be audacious: claim acquaintance on the lines of “I saw you at the last NATO summit. Don’t you work for the secretary-general?”

This sort of chat-up line is unlikely to offend anyone, especially when followed by an offer of a drink. Follow up with “I don’t understand—but I bet you do—why….”

Don’t express your own opinions on hot topics until you have a rough idea of what your new friend thinks. Express amazement and gratitude at even the most trivial insight in the hope of getting something better. If stuck with a bore or a nonentity, grasp your phone and pretend to take a non-existent call.

Don’t settle for a pre-arranged programme. If you are a journalist, you risk ending up never leaving the press centre, going from briefing to briefing where people will try to persuade you that black is white, “soon” is “now” and that Germany and America see the world the same way.

At the risk of sounding cynical, it is a good rule of thumb to disbelieve anything and everything that officials, diplomats and spin doctors say, at least for a few hours. Truth at big events is a manufactured commodity, not an absolute value.

The people who run the world know that if they can get the wire agencies and news networks all to report a particular line, it stands a good chance of becoming the received wisdom. This is particularly important when all sides want to cover up a nasty disagreement (such as the one at the recent NATO summit at Bucharest).

If there is a formal dinner, scout out the seating arrangements first. If you have been put next to someone boring, quietly switch your name card to somewhere more interesting. If you get caught, claim to be looking for the loo, or the exit.

Finally, try a bit of mischief to liven things up. If you meet a Chinese diplomat, pretend to be under the impression that he comes from Taiwan. Praise effusively the “Republic of China” for its stalwart stance in the cause of freedom. The more they splutter, the more you can pretend not to understand.

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

AMERICA calls it the “last dictatorship in Europe”. It has political prisoners, police crackdowns, state-run media and a security service called the KGB. So Belarus's image could do with polishing. Its irascible president, Alyaksandr Lukashenka, seems to accept this: Tim Bell, one of Britain's top public-relations men, was recently seen in Minsk, where he was in talks about a consultancy contract. As a Tory spin-doctor, he helped turn Margaret Thatcher into an election-winner. As Lord Bell he represents rich eastern Europeans such as Boris Berezovsky, an émigré Russian oligarch.

Mr Lukashenka's opponents have highlighted the irony that Lord Bell's visit was followed by a blitz on the opposition. Over 20 journalists from Belarus's independent media (chiefly foreign-based radio stations and small-circulation papers) were detained. The ostensible reason was an investigation into insulting cartoons of Mr Lukashenka on the internet. Defaming the president is a criminal offence.

On March 25th the police violently broke up an opposition rally to commemorate the 90th anniversary of Belarus's short-lived statehood after the first world war. Around 80 people were arrested. Opposition activists were harassed as well: in Vitebsk, Yelena Borshchevskaya, a schoolteacher, was marched from her school by KGB officials and taken home, where they undertook a six-hour search in which they confiscated computer equipment, storage materials and a photocopier, as well as an identity card belonging to Olga Karach, a local politician.

Shortly before the latest crackdown, Mr Lukashenka had ordered the American embassy in Minsk to cut its staff by half. On March 31st Belarus announced that it was reducing the size of its embassy in Washington and would expect America to make further cuts too.

Yet only a few weeks ago Mr Lukashenka had seemed to be going in the opposite direction, putting out feelers to the West, allowing the European Union to open an office in Minsk and releasing all but one of his political prisoners. That reflected official nerves about an economic squeeze by the Russians, who are driving a hard bargain on gas. Russia has little sympathy for Mr Lukashenka's swaggering and bombastic ways.

American sanctions on Belarus's main petrochemical company may have provoked the sharp response against their embassy, but they do not explain the wider crackdown. Some say there is a feud in Mr Lukashenka's circle, between those who want to keep control and those who think their only hope is rapprochement with the West. Or it may reflect the Belarusian leader's capricious thought processes. Lord Bell is used to difficult clients, but Mr Lukashenka may prove a tough challenge even for him.

Thursday, April 03, 2008

IF YOU use Google Earth to follow the A-212 road west out of Pskov, shortly before you reach what was until 1940 the Soviet border with independent Estonia, your eye may be caught by a curious black oval to the north of the road.

Look closely, and it turns out to be the shadow cast by a large satellite dish. At maximum resolution the image (pictured) is striking. The biggest dish is nearly 20m in diameter. A second one is about 10m, and five smaller ones are nearby. A shadow cast by a large wire antenna on two radio masts is also visible, as well as shiny new guard houses and an administration block, surrounded by a high concrete wall.

(c) 2008 Digital Globe (c) 2008 Europa Technologies

The installation has been built recently. (Your columnist visited the area in 2002 and nothing was visible then). What is it for? It is not recorded in any commercial directory under either the topographical name, Durkovo, or the nearest small town, Neyelovo. The military guardtower strongly suggests a close connection with Russian officialdom.

A top western security official notes that this is almost the only point in the Russian Federation (aside from the exclave of Kaliningrad) that is within the footprint of one of the most important Inmarsat satellites, Inmarsat 4-F2, which covers the region known as Atlantic Ocean Region-West. Ordinary users of satellite mobile phones and the like would find the signal this far east too faint. But with a whacking great dish, it would be possible to communicate—or to eavesdrop.

The pickings would certainly be rich. Inmarsat 4-F2 is one of the largest and most powerful communications satellites ever built. The size of a double-decker bus, it carries huge amounts of voice and data traffic, both private and government, some of it secret. It is particularly important for users of 3G mobile-broadband technology. If you are in Europe or the Americas and have a USB dongle on your laptop, there is a good chance that the data you send and receive goes via Inmarsat 4-F2.

Tracing the border of the satellite footprint round to the north does lead to one more intriguing point on the map: the island of Hogland (Gogland in Russian, Suursaari in Finnish) in the Gulf of Finland. That is even further west than Pskov.

The Soviet Union seized Hogland from Finland during the war, deporting the fisherfolk who lived there. Some construction has been taking place there of something but it is hard to make out anything from Google Earth, which has not photographed the island with sufficient resolution. One clue may be that in 2006, the FSB declared the island a border zone, making it off-limits to tourists except those with special permission. Why would that be?

The world of SIGINT (Signals intelligence) is notoriously tight-lipped. Those trying to prise even the simplest data from America’s electronic spying agency, the National Security Agency, joke that its initials really stand for “No Such Agency”. Even the phrase “satellite reconnaissance” was deemed too sensitive and the bafflingly euphemistic “national technical means” used instead.

Russia’s electronic eyes and ears are the Federal Agency for Government Communications and Information, known by its Russian initials FAPSI. Formerly the 8th and 16th Chief Directorates of the KGB, it is now part of the FSB, Russia’s main security organ. The press service of the FSB did not respond to phone calls, emails and faxes seeking comment for this article.

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Regards

Edward

Bene Merito award

Without my foreknowledge, I was last year awarded the Bene Merito medal of the Polish Foreign Ministry. Although enormously honoured by this, I have sadly decided that I cannot accept it as it might give rise to at least the appearance of a conflict of interest in my coverage of Poland.

About me

"The New Cold War", first published in February 2008, is now available in a revised and updated edition with a foreword by Norman Davies. It has been translated into more than 15 foreign languages.
I am married to Cristina Odone and have three children. Johnny (1993, Estonia) Hugo (1995, Vienna) and Isabel (2003, London)